Steam Trading Cards Spotted In Steam Database, Valve Keeping Quiet

Picking through the Steam Database is a great way of finding games that have yet to be released on the service, of course you can’t download them but its a system that has leaked a few titles and their release dates in the past with great success. Yet something different has turned up this week, it’s not a game, but a possible service and that service is called Steam Trading Cards.

This could be so many things that it’s hard to pin down what it could be. Stream already has services in place with games like Team Fortress 2 and hat trading, so it could be something to do with Stream Gifts and a way of trading these in the physical world, of course that could be anything from a mobile app to a physical printed card, who knows. I highly doubt Valve are working on a trading card game, eg; Magic The Gathering, it just doesn’t fit well with their company ideals.

However, there is one interesting thing that was dug up by a very keen eyes redditor, who has an incredible memory to boot! An old forum post from Valve employee John Cook was posted back on 2011 about something similar where he said:

“As all the feedback is evidence for, this is just the start of a lot more Steam client updates involving both Trading and the Steam Community / Friends list. There are too many good ideas to list, but it’s worth calling out a few items we want to address in the next release(s):

Better tools for finding & starting trades

Trading of CD-Keys

Trading of real world currency

More friends lists features, including more tagging

More games hooked up to trading”

Its always cool to hear that new features could be coming to steam and given that Steam was met with so much caution and concern when the services was first launched, it’s cool to see that “in Gabe we trust”, what ever they plan to do with this new card system, I can’t wait to try it out.